Fudge

Somebody suggested on Facebook that I should include some recipes. I liked the idea and have made a start on a separate recipe page which I have tacked on to the Diary, however in the meantime here is a topical recipe to be going on with.

How To Make Fudge That Doesn’t Work

Look up ‘How To Make Scottish Fudge’ online.

Follow the instructions implicitly.

After 24 hours, come back to it bloody but unbowed and try again.

Become unreasonably prejudiced about all things Scottish.

Leave it in the fridge and sulk.

How To Make Fudge That Does Work

Remind yourself of natural English superiority in all things.

Put the afternoon play on Radio 4, because nice fudge takes ages to make and is not a very exciting activity.

Put two tins of condensed milk in a pan. Save the empty tins for your husband to lick out. Add some brown sugar, butter and cream.

Put the rest of the cream in your coffee. If it were not the middle of the afternoon and indicative of shocking absence of respectability the thing to do would be to put it in your coffee with some cognac.

Stir fudge over a slow heat, simmer for ages. Keep stirring it otherwise you will get brown bits from the bottom of the pan in it, which doesn’t matter to the taste but will make you look like a rubbish housewife.

Stir until you get what is called a trace when you make soap, this is when you can see the bottom of the pan when you stir it. Keep stirring for a few minutes, it should be a jolly good trace, not just a flash in the pan.

Pour it into the baking tray you have just recovered from the other fudge, you don’t need to bother washing it. Shove it about with a spatula for a while so that it looks grainy and not shiny.

Roll it into balls when it has cooled enough and put in the fridge.

How To Feel Self-Satisfied About Fudge

Put the stupid, brown, rock solid Scottish fudge that didn’t work in a bag and hit it with a rolling pin until it is broken into lots of bits. Think about the Scots.

Put some of the big bits in a bag for your husband’s lunch box. Put the smaller bits into a tub to take on holiday. Collect up the tiny bits and chuck into a bowl. Melt chocolate into the bowl and mix well. Pour into a baking tray and put in the fridge to set.

You will then have splendid fudge, toffee and caramel chocolate. Put them on an inconspicuous shelf behind a bag of salad and a jar of pickled marrows otherwise they will not keep well.

Preparation time: depends on the cognac.

There, my first attempt at composing a recipe.

I am am very pleased with my efforts in the recipe-writing field, it is a new sort of literary challenge for me which has kept me thoughtfully occupied all day.

I needed something to keep me occupied, because we had to get up at half past four this morning to take Number Two Daughter to the station in Grange-over-Sands to begin the long journey back to Dubai. There was an October chill in the pre-dawn morning, and we shivered and yawned on the dark country platform until the train clattered in, brightly lit on its way to the city.

We said goodbye. It might be years before we see each other again, which happens sometimes. A part of me hopes that it is, because it is so wonderful who have a daughter who is having such glittering far-flung adventures that she doesn’t have the time to stop for a few days under the grey Lake District skies.

Afterwards we went home and did some tidying up and cleaning before we had to go and take some children to school which we had agreed to do as a bit of an emergency helpful thing for Lakeside Taxis, and which will be very useful on account of the cash and the holiday. We had got lots of things that we needed to do when we got home again, but we went back to bed instead of doing any of them.

We allowed ourselves an hour’s sleep and then got on with the day.

Number Two Daughter got home all right.

I have made some fudge.

Lucy’s grandparents brought her home and her half term has started, so we are really on our holiday countdown now.

We leave on Thursday.